


The Pain In Your Chest Means We Gave It Our Best

by geckoholic



Series: author's favorites [7]
Category: Blade (Movie Series)
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Families of Choice, First Meetings, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 11:10:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7530373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/pseuds/geckoholic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Good things in life happen when you least expect them. </em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pain In Your Chest Means We Gave It Our Best

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alyse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyse/gifts).



> This is a bit of a mix-and-match of things you mentioned you'd like to see, and none of them completely. I'm guessing you know how that goes. ;) But I hope you'll like it regardless. 
> 
> Beta-read by shenshen77. Thank you!! ♥ All remaining mistakes are mine.
> 
> Title is from "Burn Out" by Sam Weber.

For the first twelve hours, King sits in his cell, knees drawn up to his chest, dried blood still clinging to his skin, and doesn't move a muscle. Abby watches him through the one-way glass – courtesy of being holed up in an abandoned police station in the middle of nowhere – and tries to reconcile the man in the cell with the creature she found down in Danica's lair. The wild look he's had in his eyes. The wide grin, fangs and all. Right now he looks utterly defeated, and painfully human. 

She should probably get him food. Wash him. Test him, make sure the beast is gone and all that remains is the man. She's not sure why she doesn't; if the hesitation is for her benefit or his. Abby has a great many talents, but she's ill-equipped for dealing with other people's trauma. He needs someone who can be gentle, sympathetic, who can talk to him and give him hope that the worst is over and there's a new life ahead. But all he has is her. And all she knows how to do is put a weapon in his hand and promise him revenge. 

That's when he runs a hand through his hair, making it stand up in fresh, messy spikes, and turns to look at her. Well, not directly at her; he can't see her through the glass, but he must be aware there's _someone_ there. His eyes are red-rimmed, and the realization alone makes her want to avert her gaze and stay out of that room forever. 

“Hey,” he says. “Not complaining about the room service or anything, but I really need to pee. Which is strange, because I don't recall needing to do that in, like, years, but my bladder is about to explode and I think we can both agree that the added humiliation of pissing all over myself for lack of so much as a bucket might just exceed the limit of what I can deal with in terms of – “

Abby shoots up from her chair and opens the door to the cell, steps aside, and points in the direction of the rest rooms. He hurries past her with one hand pressed to his crotch. She doesn't meet his eyes. 

 

***

 

The twenty-four hour mark has them sitting on the floor of the cell and devouring take-out. Burgers, which, not exactly Abby's favorite, but she's not the newly devamped person in this scenario and letting him pick the food seemed like a small compromise. 

King's staying in here voluntarily, after a lengthy and awkward explanation about the ins and outs of what happened to him, why he's back to plain old human now, and Abby's willing to give him credit for that. He's not what she expected, both stronger and more vulnerable, certainly more reasonable than anticipated. She likes him, and she has no idea what to do with _that_ fact yet. 

“So I've been thinking,” he says, brows furrowing. 

Abby grins. “Did it hurt?” 

He answers that with a glare and takes a huge, somewhat gross bite from his burger, chews it noisily. Abby makes a face and shoves him, and he looks at her, wounded, before he sobers his expression and swallows. 

“Funny. No, I mean, about what I'm going to do now. Let's face it, I haven't exactly been on my way to employee of the month when Danica...” He swallows around the name, clears his throat. “When she, uh. Grabbed me. But I know things. I've seen things. I can help you. Plus!” Now it's his turn to grin, even though it still looks a little strange, pasted on, dishonest. “I had boxing lessons as a teenager. Anger management. My old man was really fond of himself for that suggestion.” 

What she wants to say is that she works alone. There's the network and she's grateful, but out there, in the field, other people slow her down. She can't worry about some clueless greenhorn, and she doesn't have the time or the experience to teach him. 

Except, he's no greenhorn. He spent the last couple of years as a vampire. He knows their weak spots in a way no one could observe and extrapolate. He _is_ an asset for that alone, and he's well aware of that, judging from the way he looks at her, not smug exactly, but with the sort of expression that means logic is on his side for this one and he knows it. 

“Fine. We'll give it a trial run. Don't you dare get me killed.” She leans over, nudges his shoulder, and her stomach flips uncomfortably when he flinches away from the touch. To save the situation, somehow, she grabs a few french fries and stuffs them into her mouth, smiles around them, and he rolls his eyes in reply and smiles back. 

 

*** 

 

Anger and blind determination are good motivators, but in the field, they won't do. Teaching is not something Abby has ever done before, but he's eager enough for that not to matter. She imparts her wild west fighting skills, aided by the bare bones he remembers from his teenage anger management boxing lessons. He picks some other things up from people they meet along the way, other vampire hunters in the network. 

All that doesn't keep the worry at bay the first couple times she takes him into a vampire lair, where they're fighting together but each responsible for their own survival. It doesn't diminish the strange feeling in her belly when she signals for him to take one corridor, while she takes another. 

She kills and slices with the mind-numbing soundtrack from her headphones, intentionally doesn't keep an ear out for how he's doing. He'll join up with her when this is done, or he won't; of course they'll help each other where they can, but there's only so much she can do. Vampire after vampire implodes under her arrows, her knife. Then it's done, all of them gone, and she's running back down the way she came. The relief that floods her when she sees him already standing at the junction almost knocks the air out of her lungs. 

King lifts an eyebrow and she shakes her head, _nothing, all good, I'm fine_ , and points to the exit. 

 

***

 

Here's a few things she learns about him during the first few weeks: he talks too much, and he can get incredibly annoying incredibly fast. He's a fast learner, talented at adapting a skill and making it his own. Getting a straight answer out of him is damn near impossible unless he's drugged to the gills and/or pretty much bleeding out. 

Here's a few things that take a little more time to learn: he recognizes authority, but not automatically; you have to show him you know your stuff. Once you managed that, he has no problem falling in line. He's a good listener, shit-talking aside, and he can figure out when it's time to drop the act and be there for someone he cares about. He's loyal. He's smart, but he doesn't trust himself. 

 

***

 

One of the hardest parts of the job is being _too late_. They follow a tip to a small brownstone in the suburbs of Chicago, but when they arrive, it's already over; two patrol cars and an ambulance illuminate the night with throbbing blue and red signal lights. Huddled on a bench and surrounded by uniformed police sits a young woman, a blanket around her shoulders, a toddler curled up in her lap. The kid is still wearing its onesie, pink with little dogs and cats all over them, and as she approaches, Abby can see that the feet are bright red; it seeped into the fabric, blood stains extending halfway up the legs. 

The mental image of how she might've gotten so much blood on her cute little night dress will haunt Abby for years. She'll dream about a little girl, no older than three or four, standing in a puddle of her father's blood. But even now, the thought reverberates, and before King can hold her back Abby's stepping forward, risking exposure and a warning from the cops swarming the place. 

“I'm so sorry,” Abby whispers, and the mother looks up, head cocked to the side. At first Abby thinks she's avoiding her eyes, but then she realizes that she's merely orienting herself by the sound of Abby's voice, that she can't _see_ her. 

“How's this your fault?” she asks, and Abby presses a hand to her mouth to keep from telling her the truth, just spewing it out, that they were supposed to be here, that it wasn't supposed to happen this way. Instead she pulls herself together, straightens her shoulders, and walks away. 

 

***

 

Three months later the woman from the brownstone walks into the abandoned apartment building where Abby and King are holed up for the moment, one hand clutching the toddler's little fingers and the other carrying a suitcase. 

She looks around, or more likely adjusts to the sounds in the room, and sets the suitcase down. “I've been asking around. I know what you do. And I want to help.” 

She launches into an explanation that involves hacked crime scene videos and grainy pictures of Abby and a whole lot of leg work. King steps forward, no doubt to deliver a smartass speech on how this ain't the place for soccer moms and their little princesses, she's blind and she's got a kid and they're both so vulnerable and it's an altogether terrible idea, but Abby holds him back with a hand on his shoulder. She remembers the onesie. The blood. She remembers how, sometimes, the only way to purge your demons is literally hunting them down, every single day of your life. 

 

*** 

 

The Nightstalkers are sort of an accident, and Abby's starting to notice a trend there. Like the chapter title in a bad self-help book: good things in life happen when you least expect them. Their line of work doesn't offer itself to putting down roots, and the more people you care for the more people you stand to lose. But soon after Sommerfield there's Hedges, and the two are talking science where Hannibal and Abby talk kicking and stabbing. Their ideas are good, though, and they work, and somehow it's all making sense. 

 

***

 

“Oh, come _on_ ,” King complains when Abby connects her mp3-player to the loudspeaker system in the empty club they've claimed as their temporary base of operations, but she flips him off and turns the music up just as soon as it starts floating through the large empty space. 

Abby rolls her shoulders, bouncing on sneakered feet. “You win three in a row, I'll let you pick the music for the fourth.” 

He frowns, exaggeratedly, theater just as almost everything else he does, and assumes a basic defensive position. “Well, looks like I'm fighting for mine _and_ Hasselhoff's honor here.” 

In the years since she's met him he hasn't listened to a single second of Hasselhoff. There's some 80s rock in his collection that she thinks should be buried _and_ set aflame to make sure it's really very dead, but that's the extent of his music-related sins. She knows that. He likely knows that she knows that. The running gag persists regardless. 

From the bar, Sommerfield whoops. “One more reason to kick his ass, then.”

King takes the time to stick his tongue out at her, causing her to cover Zoe's eyes with her palm, and still manages to parry Abby's first punch. He grins at her, eyebrow's raised to his hairline. Abby comes at him again, this time with a kick to his upper body; he tries to twist her leg, but she uses his grip, his arms, as leverage to swing herself up and strangle him. He vaults forward to try and use the momentum to throw her off, but overbalances, landing them both on the floor alongside each other. 

She sits atop him, both of his arms pinned to the worn tiles. He breathes heavily underneath her, bucking half-heartedly. Their eyes lock, and for a moment it's just the two of them, like the early days, when she first found him, except with an additional undercurrent that Abby's not ready to analyze.

Zoe's excited clapping calls her back to the here and now, to the fact that they have company, and Abby rolls off him, averting her eyes when he looks at her with a silent question in his gaze that she doesn't have an answer for yet. They both jump to a stand in one fluid motion, simultaneously, a testament to the time they've spent fighting side by side. A few light punches are exchanged; not the kind of training they can gain anything from anymore, against one another, they know each other too well, able to anticipate the other's reaction. 

He starts at her, this time, accompanied by loud cheers from their audience, and for the moment Abby discards all conscious thought. She allows herself to get lost in the rhythm and the music and the physicality of this, the familiarity, the fragile safety of whatever small measure of _home_ they managed to scrape together for themselves. 

 

*** 

 

That is, of course, when it all goes to shit. Well, not everything, Abby supposes; they did kinda save the world. They just lost _so much_ in the process. She walks out of Drake's lair side by side with King, who's carrying Zoe, and the price feels too high. That's terribly selfish, probably – what's the fate of the world compared to a handful fallen friends – but she feels cheated. Like fate itself is ungrateful. That little girl looks up at her, and there's so much grief in her eyes even though Abby hasn't gotten around to telling her that her mother is _dead_ , and it's just not _fair_. 

Sirens wail in the distance when King stops in front of an ancient Toyota, hands Zoe off to Abby, breaks the glass and hotwires the old thing to life. They drive back to the warehouse in silence, and he doesn't get out when they get there, just shoos at them both to get inside, tells Abby he'll be back shortly. 

Twenty minutes later, he returns with greasy takeout bags and a tablet of milkshakes. They sit down on the ground in the basement, neither of them in any shape to take care of the death and destruction upstairs, close enough that their legs touch, Zoe curled up in Abby's lap. She doesn't react at all, until King taps her shoulder, takes a hearty bite of his burger, and grins open-mouthed while chewing. Zoe's eyes go wide, and a small, tentative smile curls at her lips as she bats at his face to make him stop. Most of the other food goes cold, untouched except for a couple soggy fries, but that's not really the point. 

 

*** 

 

They put Zoe to bed on a cot in the lab and even though Abby can feel exhaustion pull at her like something physical, like a weight on her back dragging her down, they clean up upstairs before either of them even mentions getting some rest themselves. Neither of them talks; there's nothing to say. Nothing that could make this more bearable. 

After, they return downstairs, and King sinks to the ground next to Zoe's cot, legs bent and spread wide, and pats the space between them. Abby hesitates for merely a second before she lowers herself down and makes herself comfortable with her back pressed to his chest. She reaches out and wraps a hand around his neck, dragging him down, ignores the confusion written all over his face when she presses her lips to the corner of his mouth. Then she leans back, cheek pressed into the crook of his neck, and closes her eyes. He folds his arms around her and she knows, just knows, that they're on the same page about this too. 

They still have each other, and for the rest of her life Zoe will have them both, and they can figure the rest out tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://lostemotion.tumblr.com).


End file.
